Banking
Inflation forces Erkan, Turkey’s central bank boss back to parents house
Hafize Gaye Erkan, the new head of Turkey’s central bank, said rampant inflation has priced her out of Istanbul’s property market, leaving the former finance executive with no choice but to move back in with her parents.
“We haven’t found a home in Istanbul. It’s terribly expensive. We’ve moved in with my parents,” 44-year-old Hafize Gaye Erkan, who took up her post in June after two decades in the United States, told reporters.
Erkan previously worked at Goldman Sachs and First Republic Bank and is now getting a crash course in the skyrocketing prices that have left many young people unable to find housing.
“Is it possible that Istanbul has gotten more expensive than Manhattan?” she said.
Year-on-year inflation was 61 percent in November, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan allowed the lira currency to weaken while promising that a new team of Wall Street economists would tackle years of economic crisis.
To quell rising rage, officials also capped rent increases at 25%, though experts say this has only exacerbated housing tensions as landlords try to evict tenants, sometimes fraudulently, in order to set new and higher rents.
To quell rising rage, officials also capped rent increases at 25%, though experts say this has only exacerbated housing tensions as landlords try to evict tenants, sometimes fraudulently, in order to set new and higher rents.
In an effort to keep inflation under control, the central bank raised benchmark lending rates to 40% last month.
“We’re nearing the end of our monetary tightening measures,” Erkan told newsmen.
